The morning is coated in ice, cracking open the reverie of winter. The air is sharp, each breath balanced on crystalline pins. Snow hangs in the air, softening the edges of day, a dreamy counterpoint to the icy glass hanging from trees and crunching beneath my feet. It feels as if winter has come, it stings my cheeks and sings in my blood. There has been a quietness to my being these last few days, a softening of my thoughts, and a sadness that I cannot seem to banish from my eyes.

Yesterday the snow was newly born, open in its freshness. I walked among the trees and sat on the astronomer's rock. I climbed the hill to one of my favorite trees, a shrub really that outgrew it's need for such boundaries. It feels old and unknown, the bark so twisted, that I cannot place it within the convenience of naming. Perhaps it has outgrown categorization. I placed my head on its slender limbs and could, on the edge of my being, smell its spring blossoms, like melting snow and clear water....